Police, troops use tear gas on Chavez supporters

CARACAS: Police and national guardsmen yesterday fought pitched street battles with supporters of President Hugo Chavez who attempted to disrupt an opposition rally in a poor Caracas district.

Troops in armoured vehicles arrived at the scene while “Chavistas,” as the president’s supporters are known, threw bottles, rocks and fireworks at the opposition demonstration. Hundreds of national guardsmen and police in riot gear launched tear gas grenades to disperse over 100 rowdy pro-Chavez activists. Columns of black smoke rose from tires burning in the street and mingled with thick clouds of white tear gas. No injures were reported. Ignoring government warnings that violence could erupt, opposition parties called the rally as part of a series of events in Caracas slums to prove Chavez’s traditional support among the poor has evaporated.

Interior Minister Lucas Rincon pleaded with march organisers to take the protest to an area not considered a Chavez stronghold. “We alert the population to the security risks that this act carries,” Rincon said in a late Thursday night address broadcast by law on all local television and radio stations. “This isn’t about impeding a political act. It’s about taking it to a less risky zone.” Hours before the planned protest, dozens of Chavez sympathisers burned tyres in a plaza on the only route to the opposition’s chosen site - an eastern Caracas street beneath hills covered by red-brick shanties. The protest comes three weeks after unidentified gunmen killed one and wounded ten at an opposition march in an impoverished neighbourhood in the west side of the capital. No one was arrested.